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St. Bonaventure journalism prof co-authors three books on key Civil War moment

May 29, 2013 | ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — Chris Mackowski, associate professor of journalism and mass communication at St. Bonaventure University, has co-authored three new Civil War books published this month.

Two of the books, “A Season of Slaughter: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House” and “The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson,” are part of the Emerging Civil War Series. They follow Mackowski’s first book in the series,“Simply Murder: The Battle of Fredericksburg,” released last December.

The third book released in May is a longer hardcover, “Chancellorsville’s Forgotten Front: The Battles of Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church.”

All three books, co-authored with Mackowski’s longtime writing partner, Kristopher White, are available from publisher Savas Beatie LLC.

The books in the Emerging Civil War Series are designed to be reader-friendly overviews of some of the Civil War’s most important battles and stories, with a focus on storytelling, Mackowski says.

“The Civil War is America’s great story,” he adds, “and it’s full of smaller stories that are compelling and relevant, even after 150 years.”

“A Season of Slaughter” focuses on the battle of Spotsylvania Court House, May 8-21, 1864. During the battle, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had to fend off repeated attacks from the aggressive Union General Ulysses S. Grant in a high-stakes chess match.

“Some of the fiercest hand-to-hand fighting of the war took place at Spotsylvania, at a place called the Bloody Angle,” Mackowski says. “For 22 hours, men fought in the pouring rain and knee-deep mud in a scene that one soldier called ‘a panoply of horror.’”

“The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson” is a revised second edition, expanded to include nearly 60 pages of new material. The first edition was published in 2009 with a different publisher. “Last Days” tells the story of the mortal wounding of Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, accidentally shot by his own men at the battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863.

“Hands-down, this is my favorite story of the Civil War,” Mackowski says. “Jackson has become so legendary — the great martyr of the Lost Cause — but this was a deeply personal tragedy. He left behind a wife and 6-month-old daughter. That human element often gets forgotten.”

“Chancellorsville’s Forgotten Front” is a microtactical study — that is, an in-depth examination — of two battles that took place as part of the Chancellorsville campaign in May of 1863.

“While the main Union army was getting smacked around at Chancellorsville, a smaller part of the army was actually meeting with success a little further to the east, back in the city of Fredericksburg,” Mackowski explains. “It was the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal campaign — and it has been totally overshadowed by other stories from the battlefield.”

According to award-winning historian Don Pfanz, who reviewed the book, “Too often historians have treated the battles of Second Fredericksburg and Salem Church as mere footnotes to the greater Chancellorsville campaign. In Chancellorsville’s Forgotten Front, Mackowski and White bring the story to the forefront where it belongs, and they do so in a style at once entertaining and evocative.”

Mackowski and White have co-authored numerous books and articles together, and they are co-founders of the popular blog Emerging Civil War. They have both worked as historians at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park in central Virginia.

Mackowski, who has taught at St. Bonaventure since the fall of 2000, earned his Ph.D. from Binghamton University. He also holds degrees from Goddard College, the University of Maine, and the University of Pittsburgh.

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